Savinho could be a massive coup for Tottenham

A bit of a bombshell dropped overnight, with the shocking news that Manchester City are in negotiations to sell Savinho to Tottenham Hotspur. This might sound like rumour rag stuff if you haven’t already seen it, but The Ornacle is reporting that the deal is being actively discussed.

With competition for Brazil places tight ahead of the 2026 World Cup, Savinho would apparently like a move to a team where he’s guaranteed to be first choice. The beneficiaries of this are apparently Tottenham, who I imagine jumped at the chance to make a move.

Savinho has been a dribbling and assisting machine over the last two seasons. His shooting was not good last year, but his xG per shot and shot OBV from the previous year with Girona were good enough that I don’t think anyone should be worried about him being a genuinely wasteful shooter.

Quite a bit about his output changed as he moved between two very different sides in Girona and Man City, but there was one constant: Dribbly boy dribble good.

Savinho both took quite a few poor shots and badly underperformed his xG last season, which I’d actually consider to be a blessing in disguise for Tottenham. If he’d scored 5 or 6 goals, he probably wouldn’t be available for something in the £50m price range, and would probably have clubs bigger than Spurs making bids. Instead, a star winger is falling into their laps because of a little variance.

Savinho got a bit lucky to put up 8 assists from 5.83 xG assisted, but that’s still a lovely xGA number for a guy with around 2000 minutes played. He got the ball to Erling Haaland within 12 yards of the goal a lot.

There’s only one real negative in this move for Spurs: They already paid £50m for a guy who plays the same position. Having signed Mohamed Kudus earlier in the window shouldn’t stop Spurs from signing a much better player in Savinho, but the opportunity cost of the Kudus deal is now going to loom large. That’s a £50m midfielder they could have signed, but now won’t be able to. Either Kudus or Savinho will have to log a lot of minutes at 10 or left winger, despite it not being their best role.

City, meanwhile, are also set to ship out Jack Grealish and James McAtee. With something like £80m in fees collected and £10m+ in wages cleared off the books with these three moves, City are obviously looking to sign a new star wide player. Rodrygo and Xavi Simons rumours are already popping up, but it remains to be seen who City’s top target is going to be.

The Premier League kicks off this week, and we’ve got a season preview looking at all 20 teams in detail. It has contributions from Ted and I, plus a slew of other brilliant people. We wanted to be able to pay those other people fairly, so it’s £10, and you can get it here. Click the far right option on PC/bottom option on mobile, and make sure the button at the bottom says £10. This sub will get you access to the whole thing: All 30,000+ words, with stats and data viz you won’t get anywhere else.

Once you’ve bought it, all of the previews live here. Links to each team’s preview are in the predicted table. You’ll need to be signed into the website with the email address you subscribed with to access them.

More transfer rumours:

• Tottenham are also 10 shopping, in addition to the Savinho deal. They’ve had a £30m bid for Nico Paz rejected by Como, who are going to want a lot more than that due to sell-on clauses with Real Madrid. Spurs have also been linked to Bilal El Khannouss, who has apparently fetched some fresh interest from Newcastle.

• Speaking of Newcastle, they’re negotiating with various strikers while engaged in a standoff with Alexander Isak. A new rumour I really like is one linking them to Porto striker Samu Aghehowa. He’s a super physically gifted and intelligent striker who scored a lot of goals last year, though he admittedly has questionable first touch. I think Newcastle could make the most of his talents.

• Sunderland are having to fight off bids for right back Trai Hume, who I imagine would cost Wolfsburg more than £10m. He’s arguably the Black Cats’ best player and just straight up not replaceable for them at that price.

• Bournemouth are in dire need of central defenders, and they might be getting a new one in Bafode Diakite from Lille. He’s been a very reliable defender in Ligue 1 and is rumoured to cost about £35m, or around 60% of what they’re getting for Illya Zabarnyi.

• Every year we do the same song and dance about Weston McKennie being linked to a move away from Juventus, then winning a place in the team and extending his contract. This year, Roma is the team considering taking him out of Turin.

• The Baleba to Man United rumour keeps trucking along. I have no idea how they afford this under PSR, but I’m sure they’ve got their best accountants on it.

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